|
 |
Rogers Communications Centre - Mission
Our Mission - is to be Canada’s foremost
educational and research centre for digital communications
and interactive digital media. Since our inception,
the Centre has been designed to support and enhance
educational and professional efforts in Broadcasting,
Broadband and New Media technology and education.
The Centre is committed to providing a leading
edge learning and research environment that is
an accurate reflection of today’s workplace while
furnishing the technological infrastructure to
serve the developing communication needs of tomorrow.
 Academic Focus in the Rogers Communications Centre – The Rogers Communications Centre serves the Faculty of Communication and Design’s acclaimed degree granting programs as they relate to media and electronic communications. Specific to the Rogers Communications Centre are the schools of Journalism, Professional Communications and Radio and Television Arts (RTA). The Centre supplies additional classroom and technology support to the schools of Image Arts, Interior Design, Fashion and Theatre. Its role has recently expanded to include the all of the Graduate Programs in the Faculty of Communication and Design, and the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Graduate School for Advanced Communications.
The Rogers Communications Centre - is a fully interactive and highly adaptable communications world, featuring state-of-the-art computing laboratories and networked media and print facilities housed in its 140,000 square foot structure. Its network infrastructure was the first media building in Canada to be wired to accommodate 10 gigabit Ethernet applications. In addition, it was the first building at Ryerson University to wire its News, Apple Learning Lab and Visual Computing facilities to provide Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop. Numerous eight core Apple Mac Pro computers are spread across the Centre and are used in print, design and HDTV editing applications. The building acts as a fibre optic hub for the Faculty Of Communication and Design with 144 fibre optic cables interconnecting the divisions media intensive schools all across campus.
 The Centre houses three TV studios - including Canada's first three-camera HDTV television studio facility. FCAD's audio production capabilities are currently comprised of a bevy of interconnected labs with advanced audio production capabilities that employ six servers to support its back end. Dedicated sound facilities include over fifty audio production computers, five multi-track audio mixing control rooms and an additional nine recording studio's. They are used to record, mix and edit voice, music, radio programs, hybrid radio/television content and produce sound effects for movies and television by employing the Foley process. The Rogers Communications Centre is home to one of the world's first Internet radio stations; SPIRITLive. Updated in 2009 SPIRT was modernized for an era of IP based audio transport. The rebuild extended its radio automation beyond live to the Internet to include the automatic creation of Podcasts from programs as well as other forms of on-demand downloadable content. The station was also constructed as a modern Radio/Television hybrid environment.
 For Broadcast News - five Avid iNEWS based electronic news rooms comprise over 120 seats that service the news writing needs for Journalism and RTA. Video editing is supported by Grass Valley’s NewsEdit system for journalistic activities while an X-SAN based Apple Final Cut Pro editing system supports craft editing. Students can migrate from their own hardware, editing in either standard or high definition formats, to 50 University owned computers located in both the Rogers Communications Centre and the Image Arts building. The Rogers Communication Centre’s Advanced Media Lab I provides 24 hour a day access to thirty one Mac Pro based fibre-to-the-desktop-computers that include After Effects, Photoshop CS3 and the Final Cut Studio 2 package for non-linear editing. The Visual Computing Lab provides high powered, networked hardware for the creation of animation using MAYA Unlimited or Macromedia’s Flash software and was one of the first labs at Ryerson to be equipped with a fully integrated SMARTBoard that included software management tools to enhance the teaching process.
 In 2007 the Rogers Communications Centre provided the support and base to the Faculty of Communication and Design's Mixed Reality Production Cluster. This innovative concept called for the development of a number of flexible, smart labs designed specifically for training and production of interactive and new media. Today, the RCC based Labs comprise one of the most comprehensive media production facilities in Canada related to the teaching and production of Physical Computing and New Media technologies. These labs are serviced by 35 Apple MacBook computers, contain the counties largest inventories of Open Source Arduino technology and MAX/MSP software. In addition the labs have innovated flexibility with removable technology as well as 24 hour student access through the use of vending machines to distribute tools and materials as well as laptop safes to distribute laptops, with the required specialized software on a continuous basis.
For Electronic Field Production and Digital
Cinema - the Centre supports well over 100 High Definition and Digital Cinema field cameras. These include a fleet of cameras manufactured by Panasonic that store materials on either P2 or Secure Digital (SD) formatted media as AVCHD or cameras manufactured by SONY that use ExpressCard flash media. Students can use either personally owned portable storage and/or can make use of the X-SAN facility currently being rolled out to store and edit file based materials. To support learning activities, the Rogers Communications Centre includes a 1000 square foot room that is dedicated to production training and practice relating to Electronic Field Production.
 To Support High End Digital Cinema and Video Editing - the Centre has eight enclosed editing suites containing Final Cut Studio 2. Five of the enclosed facilities are comprised of the latest generation eight core Intel Apple Mac Pro computers and JL Cooper’s Eclipse Colour Correction surface that ties directly to Apple’s Final Cut Studio’s Color software. For critical colour correction grading monitors are provided that consist of Matrox MXO units and Apple’s 23-inch Cinema Displays providing artifact-free, true-color video display with a vertical refresh rate of 59.94 Hz. In total, over 70 lab-based computers are equipped with IEEE-1394a and b, USB 2.0 interfaces and rendered based video editing software to support video editing needs. As a result of its long history of research efforts in interactive television, 4K digital cinema, streaming media and advanced networking the Rogers Communications Centre is at the forefront of digital broadcast technology. As a result of its research efforts in interactive television, the Rogers Centre is at the forefront of digital broadcast technology.
The Internet and Emerging Technology Impact Lab - is an important dynamic innovative environment that acts as both a think-tank and demonstration lab around the development emerging technologies. It's specifically geared towards technologies that have the potential to have disruptive effects on the production of media and major impact upon the evolution of Canadian Culture organizations and their media associated professions. It's part of the Mixed Reality Production Cluster in the RCC, EDGE: Experiential Design and Gaming Environment Lab and a working relationship and technology exchange agrement with Ryerson's Digital Media Zone.
 The lab evolved from the Interactive Broadcast Learning Lab - where ground breaking work took place in authoring software and technology for OpenTV, MPEG-4, and WebTV. The lab it its heyday housed advanced interactive entertainment devices such as Personal Video Recorders, plasma HDTV displays, PCTV, DTV and HDTV reception. It partnered with groups such as Canadian Digital Television Inc. in the Toronto Digital Test Transmitter project providing support for Canada's first HDTV transmission and Canada's first end-to-end 1080I broadcast.
For The Creation Of Digital Interactive Media - our computers are equipped with the most popular packages from Adobe and Macromedia including Flash, Cold Fusion, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. The School of Radio and Television Arts makes use of Inscriber Software to develop character generation for use in any of the three SDI -based all digital studios, including the HDTV Inscriber Generator, installed in Canada’s premier HDTV studio.
 The Rogers Communications Centre provides Computer Networks – that deliver data to Ryerson’s first gigabit-to-the-desktop Visual Computing Lab, and range from Fiber Channel networks that support the Media SAN environment, and includes Canada’s first media installation that employs 10 Gig Ethernet network wiring. The building also acts as a fibre optic hub for the Faculty Of Communication and Design with 144 fibre optic cables interconnecting the divisions media intensive schools all across campus. These networks link the Rogers Communications Centre both locally at unparalleled network speed as well as globally through the Internet. The multicast enabled network allows for advanced development in new media areas such as grid computing and the Access Grid, which the Rogers Centre is actively championing as an educational and research specific collaboration tool. The unique combination of research, technology, industry involvement and academic activity found in the Rogers Communications Centre creates a dynamic in digital communications, unprecedented in Canadian educational institutions dedicated to the study of media and design.
|
|
|
|
